At the market I use a wide plexi tube, cut to the height of the paper cups I serve.
Not handy for handled ceramic cups and the like, of course, but it's ideal for Aeroing customers' cups.
We're using the Hario for hot cups this year for the first time, and it's been received well. We still use the Aero for iced cups.
edit:
Davies' technique is good -- plenty of water (contra Adler). But a persistent and ubiquitous superstition attends his narrative -- namely, a desire to avoid drip-through. With that much water, it's of no consequence at all. I hear this myth SO often, including in discussion of drip preparations -- the idea that some amount of under-extracted coffee (brown water) -- however little -- flowing through the filter during brewing is somehow a Bad Thing. And yet no one ever has explained quite why that's the case. Provided the remainder of the extraction proceeds so that the grind is 20% extracted, there's no consequence of drip-through whatsoever. The "extraction column" and what happens in it is the only concern in extraction, not the cup.
Of interest was his not wishing to bottom out the press. Great insight. The grind is well extracted at this point, and compressing the puck at this stage may, indeed, wring less desireable solution from the spent grind. I've often intuitively not pressed all the way, but I've never quite realized why. I suspect, after thinking this through, that I'll adopt this finish on the press consistently.
One qualification to praise of this technique element, however. The puck is dramatically compressed even before the plunger contacts it. In some sense, the risk is that once the plunger contacts the puck, the user may compress it at that point with more pressure than it's experienced while the puck experienced extraction flow. I suspect there's little concern to avoid actual plunger contact with the puck so long as pressure is not increased at that point (which I suspect is, for some people, and intuitive act because the press becomes more responsive to pressure once air is going through the puck -- a natural release ["yay, I can press harder the last couple seconds!"] from the control one must exercise during the early press cycle when too much pressure would stall the flow).
Remember -- a LOT of extraction occurs in the forming puck during the press. If someone has a refractometer, it would be relatively simple -- with only one nagging problem -- to determine just how much.
Something like that.
Love the rooftop setting too!
